Civic Capital and Governance in the Waterloo Region

1
Civic Capital and Governance in the Waterloo
Region

• Jen Nelles
• Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation
  Systems
• Centre for International Studies
• University of Toronto
• Paper Presented to the Annual Meeting of the
• Canadian Political Science Association
• UWO, London, June 2, 2005

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The Waterloo Region
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The Four Facets of Institutional Thickness (Amin
and Thrift, 1995)

• The presence of many institutions of various
  kinds
• High levels of interaction between institutions
• The establishment of formal or informal
  coalitions and hierarchies
• The development of shared goals and visions
  regarding regional governance

4
The Barriers to Regional Associational Governance
in the Waterloo Region

• Fragmented political authority and identities
• Weak private sector involvement in regional
  governance
• Weak ties between organizations

5
The Problem with the Concept of Social Capital

• Social capital in the form of trust, it is
  argued, is created as a by-product of other
  collective endeavours such as participation in
  civic associations, but these activities are
  themselves public goods, and are also identified
  as social capital, leaving us with the
  problematic conceptual task of distinguishing
  between the sources of social capital and the
  benefits derived from them (Woolcock, 1998)

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Competing Conceptions of Social Capital

• Coleman (1988) Social capital consists of a
  variety of entities that all consist of some
  aspect of social structures, and they facilitate
  certain actions of actors whether persons of
  corporate actors within the structure (98).
• Putnam (2000) Social capital refers to
  connections among individuals social networks
  and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness
  that arise from them (19).
• Ostrom and Ahn (2001) define social capital as
  an attribute of individuals and of their
  relationships that enhance their ability to solve
  collective-action problems (17).
• Woolcock (2001) Social capital is the norms and
  networks that facilitate collective action.
• Glaeser (2001) a set of social attributes
  possessed by an individual including charisma,
  contacts and linguistic skill that increase the
  returns to that individual in his or her dealings
  with others

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Civic Capital

• Civic capital consists interpersonal networks and
  solidarity within a community based on a shared
  identity, expectations or goals and tied to a
  specific region or locality. It is comprised of
  formal or informal networks between individual
  community members, between communities, or
  between community and the state. Civic capital
  acknowledges the critical role of local leaders
  in intensifying and formalizing collaborative
  networks within and between communities.
• By defining civic capital as, at its weakest a
  sense of solidarity or interpersonal ties enables
  civic capital to exist prior to agency but also
  accounts for how it can be harnessed and
  intensified for meaningful regional governance by
  civic entrepreneurs.

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Three Periods of Civic Capital Intensification in
the Waterloo Region

• Canadas Technology Triangle (1987)
• Communitech (1997)
• The Prosperity Council (2003)

9
Evidence of Changing Attitudes

• The CTT is a partnership, but its a tentative
  one because everybody has their own vested
  interest. Everybody wants to sell their land. You
  want to promote the whole area, and it makes a
  lot of sense on paper to say Yes, were part of
  CTT, but you want to be the place where the
  plant comes through (quoted in Leibovitz, 2003
  2626).
• Now there were some people on our council who
  were less than supportive of CTT but I think that
  ended up being because of their personality issue
  and certain dynamics and certain circumstances.
  Today that scepticism has diminished
  significantly and I would have to say that there
  is full support there once more for the
  organization (Local government official, personal
  interview 2003).